Monday, October 23, 2006

Looking at the total payrolls for each team in 2006, and the total number of wins each team achieved in the year, revealed some interesting tidbits:

--Against the metric of "$ per win", the Yankees spent over $2M in payroll alone per win (97 wins total). The Marlins spent just under $200K per win (78 wins total).

--The Dodgers at $1.13M per win were second behind the YankMes, even outspending the Mets ($1.04 per win). 14 of the 30 teams ended up spending over $1M in payroll per win.

--The Red Sox had MLB's second-highest payroll but didn't make the playoffs; they spent $1.40M per win. But strangely, that wasn't even the highest amount on a per-win basis--that was the Cubs, with $1.44M per win.

--The giants, by the way, spent $1.20 per win, which was the third-highest spending per win for a non-playoff team.

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comments:

Much has been written about Billy Beane's smarts, but what about the Twins' Terry Ryan? He gets so little press I had to Google "Twins GM" just to figure out his name. And found this nice interview with him.

Well, Ryan certainly has done a remarkable job. Everyone made a huge deal about his decision to draft Joe Mauer with the #1 overall pick, rather than Mark Prior. But I guess that turned out OK. Obviously, the Twins scouting department has managed to unearth a few gems - like nabbing Johan Santana from the Marlins back in 1999 for Jared Camp and, of course, everyone's favorite trade with the Battery Chuckers.

Speaking of payroll "plans," one of the "urban legends" about the Cubs is that the Tribune basically treats the Cubs' payroll as another line item in the budget. So the parent corporation allocates a budget of $X million dollars for the Cubs to spend on payroll, so that leads to the Cubs overspending on silly things like middling middle relievers and Neifi Perez. Of course, the ripple effect for the Dodgers (and the other teams) is that the Cubs ends up inflating the market. Personally, I'd rather allocate their dollars in a "smarter" way, rather than just increase the budget for the sake of just spending more money. . .